Επίτιμος Διδάκτορας του Τμήματος Μουσικών Σπουδών της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής του ΕΚΠΑ ο Steven Feld

Στις 23 Ιουνίου 2022, ημέρα Πέμπτη και ώρα 19.00 στη Μεγάλη Αίθουσα του Εθνικού και Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, αναγορεύθηκε επίτιμος διδάκτορας του Τμήματος Μουσικών Σπουδών της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών ο κύριος Steven Feld, ομότιμος καθηγητής στο Πανεπιστήμιο του New Mexico, Η.Π.Α.

Η τελετή μεταδόθηκε διαδικτυακά: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKItTPzCMLo

Η προσφώνηση πραγματοποιήθηκε από τον Αντιπρύτανη Ακαδημαϊκών Υποθέσεων και Φοιτητικής Μέριμνας του Εθνικού και Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, καθηγητή Δημήτριο Καραδήμα, ενώ η παρουσίαση του έργου και της προσωπικότητας του τιμωμένου από τον καθηγητή του Τμήματος Μουσικών Σπουδών της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών Παύλο Κάβουρα.

Ο Αντιπρύτανης Ακαδημαϊκών Υποθέσεων και Φοιτητικής Μέριμνας του ΕΚΠΑ, Καθηγητής Δημήτριος Καραδήμας, στην προσφώνησή του ανέφερε μεταξύ άλλων και τα εξής:

Η απονομή του τίτλου αποτελεί φόρο τιμής για την εξαιρετική συμβολή του καθηγητή Feld στα επιστημονικά πεδία της Ανθρωπολογίας του Ήχου, της Μουσικολογίας  και της  Γλωσσολογίας και ειδικότερα της Ακουστημολογίας (της σύζευξης της Ακουστικής με την Επιστημολογία), καθώς επίσης των τεχνών του ήχου και της εικόνας!

[…]

Με μεγάλη και εξαιρετική τιμή και χαρά υποδεχόμαστε τον  καθηγητή κύριο Steven Feld ως επίτιμο διδάκτορα του Τμήματος Μουσικών Σπουδών του Ε.Κ.Π.Α.

Τον ευχαριστούμε για την αστείρευτη προσφορά του στην Επιστήμη και την Τέχνη, τις ηχητικές και οπτικές καλλιτεχνικές εμπνεύσεις του με σκοπό τη διεύρυνση της αντίληψης του κοινού σχετικά με τον πολιτισμό, τη γλώσσα και τη μουσική σε παγκόσμια και διαχρονική προοπτική. Τον τιμούμε για το έργο του!

Ο Καθηγητής του Τμήματος Μουσικών Σπουδών της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών Παύλος Κάβουρας στην παρουσίαση του έργου του τιμωμένου, ανέφερε, μεταξύ άλλων και τα εξής:

“It is a great honor and privilege to present you, Prof Feld, who is going to be awarded tonight the highest degree of our University: the honorary Doctoral Degree of the Music Studies Department.

Steven Feld is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of New Mexico. A man of many honors and international recognition for his pioneering work, primarily but not exclusively, in the anthropology of sound.

Multimedia ethnography, sensory ethnography, participatory ethnography, sound, photography, dialogic editing – these are some of the most salient words reflecting the essence of Professor Feld’s work. An anthropologist, linguist, as well as practicing musician, Feld became widely known for his explorations in contemporary sonic, sensory and visual ethnography, including dialogic editing and collaborative projects between anthropology and art. One of his main contributions to the field is how multimedia ethnography has enabled listening to multiple sounds and voices through field sound recording and dialogic photographic imaging, writing and editing.

It is difficult to capture and render in a few words the scope, goals and objectives of the work of our honored guest. I shall restrict myself to three caveats about him -his work and personality. […]

Prof Feld  has paved the way towards transcending the “ethno” element in ethnomusicology which has dominated the field since its inception with positivist classifications of and speculative theories about the musics of the Other – the non-Western Other. Through his two seminal works on the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea and on Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra of Ghana, Feld has demonstrated convincingly that the arbitrary intellectual bifurcation between “us and them” is an illusion when it comes to the actually lived experiences of the so-called “Other”. Whether cohabiting in the same physical environment as in the case of Kaluli people and the birds of the Bosavi rainforest or dealing with the Western hybrid tradition of a popular music genre like Jazz from the perspective of the Ghanean musicians, the “Other” of the western classificatory habitus evaporates as a useless and, eventually, misleading analytical category. Feld’s anthropology of sound blends creatively music globalization, cosmopolitanism, sound and voice in ritual, and interspecies history. I would say that his multi–level anthropology project aims at realizing a trans-disciplinary approach which purports to cross the borders of subjective conceptualization induced and maintained by the epistemological divide between the Natural Sciences and the Humanities paradigms. He achieved this formidable transcendence  by choosing to avoid the pitfall of phenomenological structuralism, as well as “ethno”-centric and neo-colonial hermeneutics. […]

It is true that Prof Feld has integrated body and mind in a coherent whole in his works and established the idea that experience, expression and communication is a totality which is informed by and manifested as habitual consciousness. His focus on perception as a means of making sense of the sensory world of other people and other species, and of reflexivity as a multi-faceted faculty of the intellect, stand out as unique achievements. Yet, what I find to be especially promising about his work is his conscious re-turn to the sensorial interface between the Ego -however defined and addressed- and his or her worldly experience. In Feld’s approach, I see sincerity and humility towards knowing, engineered by a Trickster-like archetypal motivation for discovery of the Other. Through such conscious trickster-ing, he employs the order-less and un-conscious modality of human intelligence as one of his magical tools enabling him to avoid  the traps of intellectualism and its polarizations. Such a physical coupled with psychological interplay of intelligence is a deliberate choice on his behalf, which ultimately helps to liberate perception from any generalizing and imperialistic habitus of knowledge making and knowledge management. “Listening to the histories of listening” is a conscious return to the sensorial beyond the intellectualist boundaries of abstract conceptualization and a path heading towards re-integrating individualized consciousness which is the result of differentiated identification.  

Feld’s work in the anthropology of sound perceived in its totality is revolutionary as it crosses the boundary of identification (intellect serving ideology) and abstract intellectual differentiation. His emphasis on direct perception that is cleared of any intellectual reflexive biases in the form of subjectivism and objectivism has brought his acoustemology  and multi-media works to the point of enabling the listener to listen anew to the Other – the embodied and the imaginary Other  – thus overarching sensations, images and associations of thought as products of intellectual intelligence.

Such a conscious return to the trickster paves the way for listening to emerge as an intelligent feeling of the Other –a fundamental experience of humanity, namely, the intuitive awareness of the inner Self.”

Η ανάγνωση των κειμένων του Ψηφίσματος του Τμήματος, της Αναγόρευσης και του Διδακτορικού Διπλώματος από την Πρόεδρο του Τμήματος Μουσικών Σπουδών, καθηγήτρια Αναστασία Γεωργάκη και η περιένδυση του τιμωμένου με την τήβεννο της Σχολής από τον Κοσμήτορα της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής, καθηγητή Αχιλλέα Χαλδαιάκη.

Η ομιλία του τιμωμένου ομότιμου καθηγητή Steven Feld, είχε τίτλο: “Listening to histories of listening in Greece”.